This invention relates generally to furniture drawer construction, and more particularly to a furniture drawer assembly of the knock-down type.
With the furniture industry being faced with ever escalating shipping and storage costs, there has been a move toward knock-down furniture construction. Furniture of knock-down construction can be compactly packaged for shipping and storage while being relatively quickly and easily reassembled when the furniture is to be reused. Although knock-down construction techniques are readily applicable to drawers, drawers of such construction have displayed a lack of sturdiness when compared to conventional construction techniques. Further, such drawers have used conventional fasteners which are both unattractive and unacceptable to customers looking for quality furniture construction (e.g., dove-tail construction). Moreover, resssembly of the drawers with conventional fasteners increases labor cost, thus negating at least a portion of the costs saved on shipping and storage.
One recent knock-down drawer construction has attempted to simplify reassembly by using flexible clamps (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,036,542, issued July 19, 1977 in the name of Courtwright). However, the clamps of the drawer of this patent for securing the front panel to the side panels are attached to the front panel by conventional fasteners in a manner which is not favored by quality-seeking customers. Furthermore, the side panels require accurate machining of the clamp-receiving grooves and panel edges to enable the side panels to be assembled to the rear panel; and the configuration of the rear clamps does not provide structural sturdiness (i.e., the side and rear panels can readily be flexed outwardly to the point where the drawer will come apart).